Notes: This was a commissioned piece for CoworkerK. I’ve been working on it since at least last August. The knitting wasn’t particularly challenging apart from a couple of fiddly places where I had to decrease while maintaining the stitch pattern (I may have yelled “Stop talking, I’m counting!” at the lovely ladies in my fiber arts group at one point). The slip stitch pattern used to create the twill effect was really quite clever once I got past the needlessly obscure way the stitch pattern was written and rewrote it myself. No, the knitting wasn’t the problem, the fact that I was going to have to draft my own pattern for the sewn fabric lining was. So I knit the pieces, blocked them, and let them sit for an embarrassingly long time. Finally, I bit the bullet, rounded up my scissors, iron, ruler, sharpie, pins, needle, thread, fabric, plastic canvas, and a paper grocery bag, and faked my way through lining the sucker. Turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself.

Smoking may be a filthy habit, but it does yield some tasty goodness. The museum used to have an actual smokehouse, but it sadly burned down several years ago. Now they have a smoke barrel which works pretty well.

The barrel in the foreground is the smoker. There’s a brick lined pit underneath it (you can sort of see it to the left of the bottom of the barrel) where you build a hardwood fire. The barrel can be moved on or off the pit for more or less heat and the bucket to the far left of the picture has wood chips soaking in water that can be added to the fire to make more smoke.

We smoked chickens this weekend.

They turned out great (despite the fact that one chicken took a bit of a tumble into the fire pit) and went home with some lucky pioneers.

We also smoked several racks of lamb (which I apparently failed to get a picture of) for our midday meal which also included biscuits, plum butter, brandied peaches, mashed parsnips, beans, and cherry and vanilla custard parfaits for dessert.

Clockwise from the top we have a red thing for CoworkerK, a purple thing for me, a gray and white thing for me, a fuchsia thing for MommaBliss, a white and blue thing for MommaCodeMonkey, and smack-dab in the middle is the current sock. These are all of my active WiPs, not counting the things in the “Yeah, right” pile. Somebody please make me finish some of these before I cast on for anything else.

I know that doesn’t sound very appetizing, but that might be a good thing. I mean, if you offer someone gluten free squash bread they’re likely to turn it down resulting in more yumminess for you. If you’re feeling generous though, you can tell people that it’s the best pumpkin bread ever.

4 eggs

1 cup oil

1/2 cup apple cider

3 cups sugar

2 cups pureed squash (You can use a can of pumpkin if you’re feeling lazy, or you can bake and puree any winter squash. I used a combination of hubbard squash and something else that might have been an acorn squash.)

1 cup white rice flour

1 cup sorghum flour

1/2 cup brown rice flour

1/2 cup corn starch

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon xanthan gum

2 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 1/4 teaspoons ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon cloves

half a nutmeg, grated

Preheat oven to 350º. Mix oil, eggs, and apple cider together. Mix in sugar. Add in squash puree and mix until thoroughly combined. Sift together all dry ingredients. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Pour into two greased loaf pans and bake for an hour or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a loaf comes out clean.